Traditional vs. secular values and work-life well being across Europe

This paper examines how culture, defined in our analysis by reference to traditional versus secular values, affects the work-life balance across Europe. Specifically, we focus on the factors that affect the propensity of individuals across 30 European countries to exhibit behavioural patterns in the work and life domains consistent with the segmentation, spillover or compensation hypotheses. Testing the latter assertions, our empirical analysis replicates the study by Judge and Watanabe (1994) with data collected in 1999/00, thus bringing dated empirical results into a multi-country, contemporary realm. Based on self-reported job and life satisfaction measures, we then extend the empirical examination by controlling for different cultural values alongside a large set of standard economic and demographic factors. Our results emphasise the important role of views on secular versus traditional values as a main factor influencing respondents’ work-life balance and well being. The role of interpersonal trust features as a particularly prominent component in these results

Crowding out public service motivation

Employing workers with Public Service Motivation (PSM) has been proposed as a means of improving performance in the public sector. There is, however, no conclusive evidence showing PSM among individuals. In this paper we attempt to firstly find evidence of PSM by investigating why people change jobs from the private to the public sector. Secondly we attempt to identify factors that crowd out PSM and thus hinder individuals with PSM from joining the public sector

Unemployment alters the set-point for life satisfaction

According to set-point theories of subjective well-being, people react to events, but then return to initial levels of happiness and satisfaction over time. We test this idea by examining reaction and adaptation to unemployment in a 15-year longitudinal study. In accordance with set-point theory, individuals first reacted strongly to unemployment and then shifted back toward their former (or “baseline”) levels of life satisfaction. However, on average, individuals did not completely return to their former levels of life satisfaction, even after they became re-employed. The findings suggests that even a short period of unemployment can cause an alteration in a person’s long-term set-point. Within-person analyses showed, however, that there are considerable individual differences in reaction and adaptation to unemployment. Although there was substantial stability in life satisfaction over the years, unemployment did influence long-term levels, thus suggesting that in addition to personality, long-term subjective well-being can also be influenced by life circumstances

Reference-dependent preferences in the public and private sectors: A nonlinear perspective

Although existing studies in the strategic management literature examine the importance of reference points in the context of managerial decisions vis-à-vis organizational performance, there is surprisingly little evidence on how reference earnings affect employees' wellbeing and behavior. The present study closes this gap by investigating adaptation dynamics towards reference earnings in the context of employees’ behavioral responses to social comparisons. We argue that a wedge between actual and aspiration-level earnings causes discontent that spurs employees into action to materialize their aspirations. The robustness of such action depends on the size of the wedge in a nonlinear fashion, a hypothesis supported by our findings. Nevertheless, heterogeneity in behavioral responses is evident across the public and private sectors and across gender and educational attainment. Such heterogeneity could be partially attributed to differences in public service motivation among public and private sector employees, to the different weights that employees place on pecuniary vs. non-pecuniary rewards, and whether reference earnings are likely to trigger behavioral responses through a 'jealousy' or through an 'ambition' channel. These findings have implications for the design of strategic human resource management policies to establish reward structures encouraging employees to adopt risk attitudes that are consistent with an overall business strategic plan

Income and happiness across Europe: Do reference values matter?

Using data from the European Social Survey (ESS), we examine the link between income and subjective well-being. We find that, for the whole sample of nineteen European countries, although income is positively correlated with both happiness and life satisfaction, reference income exerts a negative effect on individual well-being, a result consistent with the relative utility hypothesis. Performing separate analyses for some Eastern European countries, we also find some evidence of a ‘tunnel effect’, in that reference income has a positive impact on subjective well-being. Our findings support the view that in environments with stable income and employment, reference income serves as a basis for social comparisons, whereas in relatively volatile environments, it is used as a source of information for forming expectations about future status

Is becoming self-employed a panacea for job satisfaction? Longitudinal evidence from work to self-employment transitions

Using British longitudinal data, we investigate whether individuals enjoy a permanent boost in their job satisfaction by becoming self-employed. We track individuals before and after transitions from work to self-employment and record changes in their job and domain satisfaction scores. We find that job satisfaction follows a rising trajectory immediately upon transition into self-employment and a declining trajectory in subsequent years, as expectations fail to materialize and the novelty of the new venture wanes down. Thus, our findings confirm that job satisfaction gains are not necessarily permanent, suggesting that self-employment is not always a panacea for job satisfaction

Traditional versus secular values and the job–life satisfaction relationship across Europe

Using data from the European Values Survey (EVS), we examine the relationship between job and life satisfaction across Europe. We find that for the majority of employees job and life satisfaction are positively correlated, thus supporting the spillover hypothesis, whereby attitudes and practices developed in the life domain spill over into the work domain and vice versa. In contrast, we find little support for the compensation hypothesis, whereby employees who are dissatisfied in one domain seek compensatory rewards in the other domain. However, multivariate analysis reveals that the strength of the interaction between job and life satisfaction is mitigated by cultural values and interpersonal trust, as encapsulated in the ‘traditional versus secular values’ index reported in the EVS data. We thus find that predictors of the job–life satisfaction relationship vary across cultures and that such cross-cultural variations are systematically related to salient cultural values and beliefs. The latter findings raise important questions about the universal application of existing theories in the subjective well-being arena

Orientation training and job satisfaction: a sector and gender analysis

Using data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), we investigate how various types of job training impact upon employees’ job satisfaction and its domains. We find that orientation training exerts a significant positive effect on newcomer male employees’ job satisfaction in both the private and public sectors, but it increases the job satisfaction of newcomer female employees only in the public sector. Other types of job training have only a weak effect on job satisfaction. We attribute the predominance of orientation training as a strong predictor of job satisfaction to its important function of facilitating the workplace socialization of new employees by reducing the uncertainty about aspects of the job that are not always easily contractible

The Emerging Aversion to Inequality: Evidence from Poland 1992-2005

This paper provides an illustration of the changing tolerance for inequality in a context of radical political and economic transformation and rapid economic growth. We focus on the Polish experience of transition and explore self-declared attitudes of the citizens. Using monthly representative surveys of the population, realized by the Polish poll institute (CBOS) from 1992 to 2005, we identify a structural break in the relation between income inequality and subjective evaluation of well-being. The downturn in the tolerance for inequality (1997) coincides with the increasing distrust of political elites.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64387/1/wp919.pd

From subsistence farming to agribusiness and nonfarm entrepreneurship: Does it improve economic conditions and well-being?

To eradicate poverty, governments across developing countries have adopted programs to promote business ownership, with varying levels of success. The mixed success of such programs underscores the importance of local business and economic conditions. Yet, empirical evidence on how local context shapes outcomes of entrepreneurship-focused poverty initiatives is sparse. In this paper, we use data from the 2015 Smallholder Survey to examine the impact of farming as a business (agribusiness) and nonfarm entrepreneurship (NFE) on household income and economic well-being in Uganda. We find that, in comparison to subsistence farming, engaging in agribusiness and NFE boosts household income and economic well-being, especially in rural areas with high poverty rates. Our research contributes to the literature by offering new evidence on the efficacy of entrepreneurial initiatives in the specific context of a developing country with a large rural and agricultural economy. In terms of policy, our analysis provides support for the promotion of agribusiness and NFE initiatives to reduce poverty and overcome disparities between urban and rural settings